Razorbladethink
by t0m4h4wk
Summary: The Brotherhood exists and Winston is of importance to it. He has a long way in front of him, but he also holds the key to defeat the Party.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** 1984 is the best book I´ve ever read (until today at least), and so I someday started to write this. It´s my first story that gets posted here, I hope you like it. Also, I have to apologize for all the mistakes I´ve made, but I´m no native speaker.

I think there will be 2 chapters in the end. I´m currently finishing the second.

Have fun!

* * *

Winston was on his way back to Victory Mansions. He had just received _the book_ from a man he had never seen, and he still felt the numbness surrounding his mind. _The book_ and the briefcase weighted nearly nothing, but Winston found it nearly impossible to carry it. He had a long way to go, because before he could turn to Mr. Charringtons house, he had to go to his old house and fetch some clothes. He halfway lived at Mr. Charringtons house already, so he had to take most of his things there. But carrying his stuff there seemed to him like coming home from an atrocious exile. 

When he reached Victory Mansions, he went up the stairs trying to ignore his twitching ulcer, which on the other hand made him notice that it was much easier now to carry the briefcase. He reached his flat and wanted to open the door, as he noticed a small packet in white paper on the ground.

Receiving packets was a rare case. Everybody knew that the post was opened and checked in the Ministry of Love, so few people wanted to send things by post. The only things that were sended this way were important messages, documents, bills, tools or special things that you could order in the Ministries if you needed them, shortly: Everything that came from the Party. What would this be?

He took it up and read on the label that it was from the Ministry of Plenty. It ran:

miniplenty boon 6079 2 84

request gooddone causaquest upreg miniplenty depreq admin 1957

It was disturbing. He had never ordered anything this year except a fuse as once the old one got burned. Or was this a trick of the Thought Police? Maybe they wanted to know where he hung around these days and whether he came home anymore. But this also meant that they didn´t know already. At this thought he became more confident. Maybe he could really get away from them in his new home for a while. But now he had to be careful anyway. It was better to open it in front of the telescreen, maybe behind a chair, but in a way that his face was shown. Then he had to keep his face emotionless as everytime. But at first he would phone the Ministry of Plenty, more exactly: The Department of Requests, administration point 1657. He unlocked the door and went in. Then he quickly dialed the right number (which also stood on the label). Afterwards he had to wait for several minutes, while sweet music hummed out of the listener. Then a bored female voice said, "Hello. What can I do for you?"

"Hello. I´ve just received something that I haven´t ordered. Can you please look wether it has been sent to the wrong address?"

"Of course. Request number?"

"6079 2 84"

"Thanks. Please wait for a minute."

She seemed to have gone away from the telephone. Winston heard the sound that a pneumatic tube made, and then the Woman was back.

"I´m sorry. But here it is unmistakably written down that this request has been uttered from your home. I´ve got the document here."

"But this can´t be! I haven´t ordered anything since January!"

"I can´t help you."

Winston hung up.

Then he took the packet and laid a scrutiny on it. It would not be uncommon if it had come from the Thought Police. It was possible that they wanted to test his social behaviour, and he would fail if he didn´t give things back that didn´t belong to him. But then he thought that they surely wouldn´t kill him for that, and that it wouldn´t be that bad if he just opened it. So he sat down on a chair in sight of the telescreen and ripped away the paper. Inside there were things that made his eyes open widely in an astonishment much bigger than he had felt as he had first seen _the room_ or the coral. At least 40 twinkling and sharp razor blades!

How long he had missed things like that! Now he wouldn´t again go to or ring up the Ministry of Plenty. But then he saw something else. On a paper, in a raw handwriting, he saw the words:

_Do you really live, 6079 Smith W? If you know whether yes or no, contact me at my workstation. Have fun with the blades._

He wondered what was waiting for him. But possibly it was their first job they had to do for the brotherhood. But he had to be careful, of course.

At Mr. Charringtons house, he told Julia about the package and what had been in it. She also was of the opinion that Winston should answer it. But that would have to wait for the next day anyway. Winston spent the rest of the evening reading _the book_ and finding out that Julia had fallen asleep after two chapters. He laid himself down at 11, because he had something special to do on the next day and therefore had to get up early.

It was 8 o´clock when he already was sitting in his cubicle at the Ministry of Truth. He had gotten up at six, leaving Julia sleeping. In this situation, it was again a bit difficult to stay cold and calm in front of the humming telescreen, because the thing he was up to do contained treachery of the party, and on the other hand it was his duty and he didn´t want to fail, and all that made him considerably nervous. But he managed to keep his face expressionless as he whispered into the speakwrite. After that he threw a the piece of paper that the speakwrite had written on into the pneumatic tube and waited. The tube could also be used for communication. He had sended a message exactly to the destination he had found on the label of the packet.

He waited.

Suddenly he heard a PLOP and another small paper sprung out of the tube. He was alarmed. Show no expression, he admonished himself as he unrolled it:

times 1.,2.,3.,4.,5. 08 1984 reporting war eastasia doubleplusungood rectify nowstat.

He sighed. That was only a job. He studied it for a moment – it meant that by now Oceania was again at war with Eurasia. No, not again, Oceania WAS at war with Eurasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. Eastasia was an ally, and the times of the denoted dates were reporting it falsely. He felt relief and anxiousness at the same time and wondered when a reply was about to come –

PLOP!

And that was the reply, as he found out as re read it.

At the end of the morning, the conversation had gone this way:

W: Thanks for solving my request, the razorblades were so sharp that I cut myself this morning.

M:Take care, you could die.

Winston had at that point realized that he somehow had to answer the question that he had read in the packet yesterday if he wanted further information, and he speakwrote:

W: I think I´d stay alive for a while.

Then it all had gone straight to the thing itself.

M: The brotherhood has been watching you for several years, and soon you would have been introduced. Unfortunately, the Thought Police has an eye on you, and now that you have been at O´Brien´s house and confessed that you would torture children with acid for the brotherhood, it is only a question of days, maybe hours when you and your woman get captured. O´Brien has deceived you. We recommend you to use our razorblades. Anyway, we hope that every strength of the world may be with the unbound soul of yours.

It is conspicious to write and receive more than six times in a row to and from the same place, so be careful with what you´re writing me.

W (after a long expressionless pause): What proof do I have that I´m talking to a member of the brotherhood now and not to one of the Thought Police?

M: If it were like that, we wouldn´t be talking now.

W: Good, I see. But can you tell me if there is any way of getting out here?

M: I´m afraid there is not. You will either die or get your mind cleared of any reality. Goodbrainmake, in Newspeak.

W: Well, they will have to kill me. I don´t intend to let them into my brain.

M: Very brave. You should know, we have the opportunity to heal you afterwards. For the unlikely case that they let you live, there is still hope for you. I´ve got to ask you a question. Are you ready to give your live for the brotherhood and let every bad thing of the world come down on you fulfilling your instruction? I know you´ve sworn it to O´Brien, but I need your assurance. You can´t escape the party. But there is still one thing you could do.

Winston sighed again. He speakwrote: Tell me about it.

M: This is the last message I am going to send. One more and there would be too many. If you see O´Brien again, and if you get away alive, and thats all that matters, please try to find out whether it could be possible to get him on our side. Good luck, and remember, there is hope. Just like our leader said.

Then it had ended. The Morning had already gone and Winston could go home to take a break. He was afraid, now that he knew that very soon he would get arrested and tortured and afterwards killed, but he was more determined than ever to stay alive for the brotherhood and for a time where thought would be free. He remembered how he had sworn to O´Brien that he would die for the Brotherhood, and that hadn´t changed, although O´Brien was going to evaporize him.

He came to the shop and went in, to find it empty. Wondering where Charrington could be, he entered the room.

It was empty too. Nothing seemed to be wrong, but Julia wasn´t there. He looked nervously around, feeling his fear rise. Surely they had taken her. Suddenly he noticed a familiar sound, so familiar that he could puke everey second. He turned around. There he saw it. The picture was gone, and now there hung a cold and maddening telescreen.

Mr. Charrington was suddenly there. He had waited in a corner behind the Wardrobe. "Oh my, oh my," he said, "the evil betterthinker. Get him!"

Winston heard a tap behind him and then received a blow on the head by a rubber truncheon that sent him sleeping a the sleep of a dead man.

Winston had to go through every single thing that waited in the Ministry of Love. He was beaten, hurt and humiliated, then his thougts got sweeped out – by O´Brien, who seemed to have his fulfill in teasing him and tearing down his intellecual views step by step, piece by piece.

There was nothing, no real reality, and he was only a shell that contained nothing of importance. There was only the Party, and there was Big Brother, the only thing that existed.

He was a better human. He made no crimes anymore, and his loyality was for the party, and therefore he was happy. His whole life was happy. He ate and ate.

But then, the evil came up again within his mind, and again he denied everything that made the world: The Party. And he hated Big Brother. Because he loved Julia. But O´Brien said that he was on a good way and ready to take the final step: Room 101. And there he betrayed her, and he fell down, until Big Brother came to save him from his endless fall through time and space.

Stupid, self-willed exile from the loving breast!

The long hoped-for bullet entered his brain...

He loved Big Brother...


	2. Chapter 2

But the releasing bullet somehow stayed in the pistol. Instead, Winston heard a fair voice from behind.

"Stand up and follow me without drawing too much attention to you."

He must have been in a dream, he thought. All the love that had surrounded him was gone now, he had woken up and had nothing left except the instruction he had to follow. He waited two or three seconds, then slowly stood up and turned around. There, among the other people, there was a peculiar man, easy to catch with the eye and with a yet familiar asian figure. He was walking out of the Chestnut Tree. Winston put his chair back and hurried to follow him. But the chinese man had already left the café, and as Winston was out on the street, the man seemed already gone. In panic, Winston looked left and right and forward and caught him at last, when the man was halfway around the next corner. He had to hurry again and cursed his well-fed body, as he ran through the roads. The man seemed always to be just walking fast without haze, but he could have easily run away without leaving Winston a chance to follow. It seemed that he tried to turn around another corner just the moment that Winston came around the last. In Winston´s mind there was another thougt that told him that he had just imagined the voice. But somehow he was determined to find out. Winston suddenly noticed that he was in one of the districts of london where the proles lived. And there were enormous factories not far away.

Winston was gasping for breath as he turned around a storage. But then he saw with ease that the man had stopped in front of one of the bigger 19th-century-houses, which always looked like falling into pieces the next moment. Winston walked over the street towards him. The man really seemed to be waiting for him, and now Winston could take a close look into that round, yellow asian face, and of course he knew at once why the man had seemed so familiar to him. He recognized him now; it was Martin, the servant of O´Brien.

"I suppose you know who I am," said Martin.

"Yes," answered Winston, suppressing a gasp.

"I´m sorry that you had to hurry that much, you seem slightly exhausted. But as you can tell, every organized counterrevolutionary activity could be discovered by the Thought Police at the slightest mistake."

"Well, it´s alright. So, you really are one of..." he started and noted the next moment that he was speaking with a childish curiosity. Martin made a swift movemend with his left hand. "The answers follow inside. You only have to follow me." With that, he went over to the big old house.

Winston just stood there, undetermined. He didn´t really feel the wish to go inside and find out about that. He wanted to get back to the chestnut tree and embrace Big Brother, because nothing existed besides Big Brother, and he loved Big Brother because Big Brother was everything and Big Brother cared for him and Big Brother was everywhere, in the streets, in the Buildings, in the whole city and in every part of the country. And he felt completely absorbed into the presence of Big Brother.

But he knew that he was a thought criminal, and therefore he didn´t deserve to be loved by Big Brother.

Then, again, the thought police would soon release him from his pain and shoot him.

Then, without warning, there was a picture in his mind. A picture of him begging for life and betraying something that appeared to be what he most loved in the world. And suddenly he realized that there where rats everywhere. And also suddenly he realized that he wasn´t afraid of how he would be going to die, but that he simply wanted to live.

His legs sprung to life as his mind was trembling and roaring at that thought, and he ran to to the door as fast as he could.

At the door, he already had forgotten what had made him run. Why should he feel insecure or uneasy? Big Brother loved him! And he loved Big Brother.

But then he realized that he had been aware of that already, and even if he thougt that he felt like that, Big Brother wouldn´t be able to protect him from the absolute evil of thoughtcrime. And that made him afraid again, afraid of himself and everything. Caught in that nightmare, he hastily opened the door.

Inside, he was standing in a long white hallway, so long that he wondered how it fitted into the building. At the ceiling, there was a sign showing the words "Do you really live?".

Winston looked around and saw that there was, easy to see because of the white floor and the white walls and the white ceiling, a small black arrow painted on the ground, one pace away from where he was standing, pointing to the left side.

Winston looked left. The white wall bore a mirror. In it, Winston saw a thick, beetlelike man. That was him? No, he looked healthy and beautiful! He didn´t like doublethink and he wanted victory gin.

"Good day, Mr. Smith."

Winston suddenly noticed that he had been quavering some kind of nonsense silently. He hurried to turn around to where the voice had been coming from. Behind him, a man had been standing. He was not tall and had a normal figure, dark curly hair and an odd face that seemed mischievous and intellectual at the same time. "I am glad to meet you after all."

Winston could suddenly see him clearly and found out that he hadn´t been able to focus his eyes and now had managed it for the first time. "So you are the one I talked to that morning I got arrested afterwards?"

"Yes, and I was who sent the package to you. My name does not exist, of course, but my brothers call me Mr. Wallace. Andrew Wallace. Nice to meet you, Mr. Smith."

Winston shook his hand gladly. As far as he could remember, he had never been called "Mister". In his youth, it had either been Winston or brat or scum, and from the day on that he had found work in minitrue, he had always been Comrade 6079 Smith W.

"Nice to meet you. You are a real member of the brotherhood?"

"Yes, I am, and Martin is one, too. He also belongs to the thought police and had the order to kill you. But we had better use for you alive." He smiled slightly. Winston noted that he already liked him.

"But I think I should introduce you into our system and that building," he continued. "Everywhere outside there are signs saying "Danger, do not entry", and in the Ministry of Plenty, these houses here don´t exist. I´m even not sure whether they kow about this place on earth or not. It is one of the brotherhood´s headquaters. There are some of them, over twenty at least alone in Airstrip One, but we here only know where some of them are. Here we work; which means sabotage of governmental institutions, of the telescreen net, searching for ambushs for those who are on the list of the Thought Police and building up an oposition, not alone in the outer Party but also among the Proles. I am the Executive Director for unperson cases."

They had gone to the end of the hallway and stepped down the stairs. On a sign, Winston read "Underground level 1".

Wallace opened a door and led him in. Inside there were a few persons writing at machines that Winston knew, because twenty years earlier he had worked with them, too. They were called typewriters. Typewrites, of course, in Newspeak. The writers, young men and women, but also some of the elder ones, greetet them with silent "Hello"s and kept on writing.

"This, for example," said Wallace, "is where news from outside, may it be the times or may it be one of our spies in the Thought Police, are processed and forwarded. Whenever something important happens out there, we know it first and how to deal with that. Good work, keep on!"

Winston looked in amazement at the determination to work against the tyranny. The brotherhood existed, and it was alive. On every single face, Winston saw that its owner would keep on with his work for the brotherhood for the rest of their lives.

"Another one who doesn´t exist?" asked an elder man from his chair. "Yep" said Wallace.

"Hope you´re alright," said the man. "They nearly got me before I came here. I hope they aren´t angry any more." He stood up and shook Winston´s hand. "I´m Archie. If you choose to join the brotherhood, I´d take a job like this one. Bloody typing."

"Not so fast, please," said Wallace, grinning. They went out. "You see," said Wallace, "The people here are like you. They come here in the midday hours and work for the brotherhood instead of having lunch. They are unpersons hiding from the Thought Police. They are disabled or something like that. And they all know it is right what they are doing. This building has six undergrund levels, every single one, from the News Department here to the Telescreen Hackers down there, filled up. But there is still so much work to do."

Without warning, Winston became aware of all the things that had happened in the past and sighed. "But I have betrayed everything. And my mind holey and full of doublethink. I must admit it. I simply can´t do anything."

What he said was true. He didn´t exist, and he was nothing, no matter what they told them, and his only destination was the party and Big Brother and to wait for the shot that ended the life of a dead.

Wallace suddenly flourished a razor blade only centimeters away from his nose across his face, and Winston stumbled back in shock. "You are alive, Winston!" said Wallace. "Do you still want to die? Or do you want to live further?"

Winston knew the answer.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Thats the last part, finished already some months ago. Please excuse my not always perfect grammar.

**DRUNKEN LANDLORD:** Hey, thanks a lot. Here you are.

* * *

The overground levels of the old, decayed-looking building were where the unpersons lived. There they found sleeping rooms, rooms to cook their meals and rooms to spent their time. Besides them there were other members that were assigned to arrange their concerns outside the world. The building was a refugee, an asylum for many of those unpersons. All the time it was full of people. It seemed that the brotherhood took care for every single thing. They had even an underground level, one above where the Telescreen Hackers were working, where there was a connection to the canalization. There the brotherhood had established contact to a great number of prolean youth gangs, which helped them spread revolution among the proles.

In the upper levels there was a department whose rooms were called "Existence Renewal Rooms" (ERR). That was where they helped the new unpersons who had been in Room 101 of miniluv, people like Winston, to get over what had happened to them. That was where Winston spent most of his time. There were some men, called Psychatrists, who were working with him. Sometimes it was even Wallace. The other men were fine doctors, of course, but Winston especially liked to talk to Wallace. He remembered how Wallace had told him: "You do exist. You think you don´t exist because the Party told you that you do not exist. Because you are sitting here, breathing and listening, the Party was essentially wrong. But there is another argument. You surely had to deal with jobs concerning 'unpersons'. 'Unpersons' is a Newspeak word that simply means 'nonexistent persons'. But if you accept that, you also have to admit that everyone else is an 'existent person'. The Party´s opinion of 'alive' and 'dead' proves its nothingness."

Another time he had said: "Here are two buttons, and here is another pair. If you count them, you get four. Now drink two bottles of wine, and you might see five, six, seven, eight, you might even believe it, but physically there are always four buttons."

And again, another time, he had explained: "If there weren´t so rare opportunities to commit suicide today, many more people would. Do you know that it is Thoughtcrime to consider committing suicide? There has been a word for it. In the first Newspeak edition, but it was abolished already in the second. It became an 'Unword'. That word was _razorbladethink_."

Winston wondered how many cases like his were dealt with at the same time. Wallace told him that he was doing much better than anyone before. Maybe that was because one could choose the length of the therapy sessions and interrupt them at any time. Winston day after day was the first one in one of the ERR´s, going there at six o´clock, and always left at one at night. In the midday hours he preferred to stay there instead of having lunch. Thus he got as thin and crooked as before, but he felt better every day, and they actually had an ointment that made his varicose ulcer become better.

One morning, he looked into the dim light with dreary eyes and felt alive. And suddenly he was overcome with pain, pain beyond everything. And then, more clearly than ever, he saw Big Brother. Big Brother was embracing him, comforting him.

As Wallace came in, Winston couldn´t decide between weeping and laughing happily. "I´m sorry," he said. "I love Big Brother, and I don´t think that this is going to change ever."

Wallace said, "I don´t think so. You are doing fine. The poison inside you feels that it gets cured, and now it is fighting its mortal agony. You are ready now. Martin, please take him to Room 007."

Room 007 was a room which walls were all mirrors, and on the opposite wall, there was a telescreen. Turned off.

"I´ll leave you alone now," he heard Martin´s fair voice. "Don´t worry, after this you are a new human. Or, more exactly, you become the old Winston."

Winston doubted this, because he felt that inside him, there was a unbreakable core that loved Big Brother and wouldn´t stop that, whatever he did.

The telescreen snapped to life. He saw a dark-haired girl, sitting on a chair, tied up and struggling to free her hands, without effort.

There was a faint call inside Winston´s mind...

Suddenly, there were hundreds of dirty rats, crawling towards the girl, who was now squeaking in disgust. Winston was totally disgusted, too, and he wanted it to stop, but he couldn´t even turn his head away from the telescreen and the dreadful scenery.

The rats had reached the girl and were now crawling all over her. Winston couldn´t bear to look at this, but it was reversed hundred times, everywhere in the room and the rats were squeaking, too, loud and frightening. Winston felt how his mind got battered by this, it had to stop immediately, but the door was shut, he couldn´t get out and he couldn´t do anything, this was only a telescreen. Somewhere in this world there was something going on that was worse than anything, and it got even worse as the girl started to look familiar to him.

The rats were biting her everywhere, she was bleeding, and she let out a single shriek, then two and then was screaming endlessly. It was too much for Winston. He felt his heart break in two, and a razor blade chopped down this hard core inside him, he was in the most horrible world that was possible. And he was screaming in desperation as he finally recognized the girl: "Julia! NOOOOOO! STOP IT! DO IT TO ME! NOT HER! DO IT TO MEEEEEEE!"

The world vanished as his scream and the allconsuming noise from the telescreen became one.

He woke up lying on solid ground, on a white sickbed. His body felt like a bag of knives, but he knew that there was no Big Brother any more. Wallace was standing beside him.

"The Party has been burned out of you, Winston."

Winston looked at his hands and couldn´t believe it, but he felt, he knew it was right.

"Now you are ready to become one of us. Do you remember the additional task I gave you?"

"You mean, to get to know whether it is possible to get O´Brien on our side?" He wasn´t sure about the possibilitiy of that and feared that there was no... But then he remembered how O´Brien had said: "They got me a long time ago, Winston."

"Yes. This will be what we´ll discuss the next days. But now, you should know that there is someone waiting for you outside."

Winston wondered who it was and looked to Wallace in surprise, but Wallace smiled and gestured to the door. So Winston stood up and went out.

Outside, he found out that he was in the long entrance hall again. And then he saw who was at the opposide and started to run as fast as he could with his varicose ulcer.

In the middle, he met with Julia. At once he knew that she also had been here for some time. She was thin again, too, and the scar across her forehead didn´t matter anymore, all in all she was more beautiful than ever. She jumped into his open arms and clasped together, they shared a hungry kiss.

O´Brien was walking out of his office. It had been an interesting day. He had had some delicate cases of Thoughtcriminals and broken their once proud, free-feeling and wild Minds one after another. For the Party it had been an eventful day, too. Especially for the Ministries of Love and Truth, who were facing a good deal of work. It was simple in fact, and it was simple in the begin for two sentences that counted: Oceania is at war with Eurasia and Eastasia: Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and Eastasia.

It was not a dangerous situation, only the effect of the fact that Oceania had become too powerful in Africa and India, and so it had been only a question of weeks until the other two superstates would ally and declare war on Oceania. And he personally was looking forward to a comfortable evening with a bottle of wine...

He rounded a corner and suddenly his world fell into pieces.

"You! You two! That´s... thats... impossible..." He stumbled back.

"Suffering a 1st range obsession of power. Seems not curable the normal way." said Martin.

"Room 101" said Winston.

O´Brien knew what was going to happen there already, as they took him. And he knew that he would be a completely different man afterwards. He had lived in the knowledge that he was powerful, but since he couldn´t have absolute power over the human mind, he knew that it was all useless, and he became aware of his own weakness, of his own real existence. The Party really died that moment.

But the Party got abolished not until some years had passed. One day, the population was suffering under the permanent total war, under more rocket bombs than ever and even under atomic bombs, falling and leaving nothing behind. This was the hour that the proles claimed their right, and from there on, the future belonged to them, without controlling the past and without controlling anyone in his freedom in the present


End file.
